Final US Stockpile of Lethal VX Agent Destroyed in Kentucky

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The final stockpiles of a lethal chemical agent within the U.S. have been safely eradicated, in accordance with Kentucky officers accountable for destroying the Chilly Struggle-era weapons.

The ultimate M55 rocket containing VX nerve agent was destroyed Tuesday on the Blue Grass Chemical Agent plant. Officers on the Kentucky plant started disassembling about 18,000 of the rockets and draining the VX agent in July, in accordance with a information launch from plant officers.

Candace Coyle, the plant’s mission supervisor, mentioned Wednesday the nation’s whole stockpile of VX nerve agent “is now utterly destroyed.”

VX is taken into account the deadliest of the chemical brokers that was produced by the U.S., a lot of it within the Sixties. It has a consistency much like motor oil and even a tiny quantity causes victims’ our bodies to flood with fluids, producing a sense of drowning earlier than dying. Officers in 2017 declared that assassins used VX agent to kill the brother of North Korean chief Kim Jong Un in a Malaysian airport.

The Kentucky Army depot nonetheless has 277 tons of different chemical brokers left to be destroyed, after starting with greater than 520 tons of VX, GB and mustard agent that was in storage for many years. Officers mentioned all of it needs to be passed by subsequent 12 months after it started eliminating its mustard agent stockpiles in 2019.

“After greater than a half century of chemical weapons storage in central Kentucky, the ultimate chapter at Blue Grass Army Depot will quickly start,” mentioned Col. Stephen Dorris, commander of the depot in central Kentucky, the place the plant is situated.

The mustard agent marketing campaign completed in September. The plant additionally destroyed 4,000 projectiles with GB nerve agent within the first half of 2020. One other 13,000 155mm projectiles with VX agent had been destroyed from January to Could 2021.

The army had deliberate many years in the past to destroy the weapons in Kentucky by burning them, however after considerations from residents and environmental teams, a plan was settled on to make use of water and chemical compounds to neutralize the brokers.

There are additionally chemical weapons being destroyed at an Army facility in Pueblo, Colorado. The stockpiles on the two websites accounted for the final 10% of an authentic stockpile of greater than 30,000 tons of chemical weapons within the U.S. The Army used incineration strategies to destroy the weapons at different websites.

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